


To the Crossroads

by disgruntled_owl



Category: Dracula & Related Fandoms, Horror of Dracula (1958)
Genre: Blood, Blood Drinking, Character Turned Into Vampire, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Vampire Hunters, Vampire Turning, Vampires, hammer horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-16
Updated: 2017-12-16
Packaged: 2019-02-15 13:52:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13032528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/disgruntled_owl/pseuds/disgruntled_owl
Summary: Dracula discovers Jonathan Harker’s plot to destroy him and gives him a punishment worse than death. Harker races to get intelligence—and evidence identifying his accomplice—away from Dracula's castle, in the hope that his partner will still be able to defeat the Monarch of All Vampires. To succeed, Harker must stay ahead of Dracula’s suspicions and of his own unholy transformation.





	To the Crossroads

**Author's Note:**

  * For [calliopes_pen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/calliopes_pen/gifts).



I woke to feel myself swallow. A cold liquid lingered on my tongue, tasting of copper. My face was pressed against the bare skin of a powerful chest. The heart beneath it pounded at a leaden pace, the pause between its beats like the silence between lightning and thunder.

Dracula pulled my head away from him. I found myself on the floor of the crypt, cradled in his arms, a perversion of a maternal embrace. My gaze drifted from the gash in his chest, up along the elegant curve of his throat, to his red, pitiless stare. His mouth was smeared with my blood—it clung to his teeth and dripped over the swell of his bottom lip. Panic beat its wings in my chest and he smirked. He must have seen it in my eyes.

Steady on, I told myself. In his presence, every movement, every word, every thought must be measured.

“You came to kill me, Jonathan Harker.”

I swallowed again and my tongue grazed the fresh points of my fangs. “But you have not returned the kindness,” I whispered back.

“I will have you suffer for your treachery,” he declared. “And I will hear you confess.”

“Everything I might have hidden is laid bare.” I spoke slowly to suppress the tremor in my voice.  “You see my whole scheme now, from beginning to end.” I glanced at the fallen stake and the spatter of red at the base of his bride’s stone sarcophagus. Seeing this evidence of my mistake, I felt a pang that nearly cleaved my heart in two. Had I dispatched Dracula first and then finished her, I might still be human.

He snatched my chin and turned my face toward his. “I think not, Mr. Harker. For a century no one in these lands has dared question my power. The peasants hang their garlic and say their prayers. When they have no other choice, they select their sacrifices. I have claimed too many of their foolhardy sons for them to raise a hand against me.” He dug his fingernails into the flesh of my cheeks. “No, this plot was hatched from far away, and you are much too weak to have been its mastermind. My true enemy will follow you here, won't he?”

“Believe what you like, but I acted alone,” I croaked. His pupils shrank to pinpricks as he searched my face for signs of a lie. The pads of each of his fingers pressed into my back. Outside, the wind wailed and I focused on the sound, hoping it would sweep away the face of the accomplice that appeared in my mind.

“Is it so difficult to imagine?” I continued, goaded by his silence. “I have served as librarian in many great houses and universities in Europe. Their holdings gave me all the tools I needed to learn about you and find you. You may have many books as enemies, Count Dracula, but only one man.”

He bolted up and hurled me to the floor. Outside of his embrace, I realized how much of my strength he had drained away. I curled up at his feet, no more substantial than the skeletal brown leaves that littered the crypt.

“I suspect you will tell me otherwise,” he snarled, glowering down at me as he licked my blood from his lips. “You are a man no longer. When he that sent you comes to destroy us both, you will seek my protection.” He stepped over my body, the fringe of his cape sweeping over my face. A chorus of wolf howls greeted him as he stalked out of the crypt and slammed the door behind him.

A man no longer. The fresh horror of these words flooded my mind as the doors to my old life closed one by one. Moonbeams streamed through the crypt’s stained glass window; the sunlight that would follow would now burn like acid. Lingering bits of food writhed in my intestines, demanding to be purged. I could never return to my home, to my place in society, to my life with Lucy. To lose her was to hear the gates of Heaven slam shut. Dracula did know how to make men suffer. He placed them beyond the reach of friends and loved ones, and left them awake to know it.

I staggered to my feet and braced myself on his bride's sarcophagus. Below me lay her haggard, blood-spattered body, my stake jutting through the diaphanous fabric of her gown. Not long ago, I stood over her in awe, my hand trembling as it clutched my hammer. As Dracula had cruelly deduced, I should have never tried to attack these vampires myself. I was only meant to track his behavior and secret out intelligence until the experienced hunter arrived. The bride’s presence warped my plans, and her long lashes and pleas for help sapped my resolve. Her bite hurled me forward in time, when I would face her and her master alone, and lose.

Gazing at the woman now, I felt a nauseating sort of kinship. She had been a mortal woman once, and I hoped she was now a portent of my own deliverance, however gory and painful. But all that would depend on the predator Dracula sensed, but only I could name: Van Helsing.

A cold sweat sprung up all over my body and my stomach heaved. I slumped over the edge of the sarcophagus and vomited up the last of its contents. With that, a crevasse yawned within me, black and bottomless. A new hunger rose like smoke from its depths; a billowing plume flowed up the center of my body, while tendrils wriggled into my every cell. The crimson stains on the corpse called to me. I tore the white fabric away from the stake until I bared her breast.  Still-liquid blood glistened at the edge of her wound, icy to the touch.  I raised my fingers to my lips, but as they parted, a shudder of revulsion surged up from my belly.

I ran from the crypt out into the night. Sounds and shapes rose up from the darkness in sharper relief than I had ever experienced before. I could hear the breeze strum filaments of spider silk, and in the distance I could see owl wings spread against a black lattice of branches. Van Helsing spoke of these heightened predatory senses as gifts that evil bestowed upon the undead. Moonlight spilled onto the face of the castle, casting it in white, like a colossal, empty-eyed skull. I stayed close to its walls, for the same deathly pall that silenced the birds relieved my overstimulated eyes and ears.

Dracula was nowhere to be seen, and I knew not whether to pursue him or to flee. I circled the castle in a daze, walking until I passed beneath what had been my chamber. The window through which I had escaped still hung open. The room had gone black except for a slender ray of cold white light.

From deep within emanated the rasp of tearing fabric. I peered inside in search of a candle’s flame; instead, a massive shadow swept across my field of view. I heard more scratches and tears, this time close to the window. Heavy footsteps drummed against the floor. Drawers slammed, glass rang out as it shattered, and furniture thundered as it fell. Then, the cacophony in the room was overwhelmed by a furious roar.

Dracula must be searching through my things, I realized, ravenous for some scrap of evidence that would reveal the name he sought. He would find nothing, I told myself as I massaged my throat. All my correspondence to gain my post had been between Dracula and me alone. I had never once said my accomplice's name in his presence. I had not brought any scrolls or textbooks that would have betrayed my true purpose or made any mention of Van Helsing. No, Dracula would not find his name anywhere, except—

An image of my diary flashed in my mind. I froze. Between its crimson covers, my teacher’s name appeared countless times. Anyone who read it would not only discover my connection to Van Helsing, but our shared mission to destroy all who spread the cult of the undead. It would detail everything I had learned since arriving at Castle Dracula. If delivered to Van Helsing somehow, it would tell him what had happened to me, and he and his apprentices could still profit by it. Dracula—and my wretched undead body—could still be destroyed by it.

I had to get the diary away from this place before Dracula found it.

The door squealed and Dracula marched out of the room. I wound my way through the shrubs, hoping he could not see me from a corridor window. Before I made my ill-fated venture into the crypt, I hid my diary in the recess of a large boulder beyond the castle entrance, a few steps past the creek bridge. A small statue of the Blessed Virgin, an anomaly in this cursed place, stood guard over it. Hours ago, I had taken a shred of comfort in her gentle expression. Now, the sight of her stung my eyes, and I was forced to throw my jacket over her to retrieve the book.

I racked my brain for a place to take the diary where an ally might find it. No superstitious villager would venture this far; I had to walk several kilometers along an overgrown path to reach the castle after the coachman abandoned me in the woods. The crossroads where he left me was the last place I had human contact. Now it was my last hope.

The castle door swung open with a violent crack, and I ducked down behind the boulder. Dracula’s silhouette filled the fire-lit doorway, his cape swirling around him. For a moment he vanished, and my chest tightened. Perhaps Van Helsing was wrong and his kind—our kind—had the ability to transform after all. Then I saw him rise from the stairwell to the crypt and charge down the path to the bridge, directly toward me. I couldn't run—there would be no cover until I reached the forest, and a predator like Dracula would detect my flight.

I slipped the diary into my waistcoat and crept back toward the bridge. The channel beneath it was narrow but deep, and at its bottom a serpent of icy water threw up spray as it wriggled over the rocks. The eaves of the bridge sheltered the steep riverbanks, which were studded with stones and plastered with black mud. Not waiting to see if Dracula's eyes were upon me, I crawled down into the riverbed and up under the bridge. The chilly creek water infiltrated the cracks in my shoes while the mud seeped through my shirtsleeves. There I held my breath and waited, the diary heavy against my chest.

Footsteps sounded on the planks, mere centimeters above my face. They slowed to a stop at the center of the bridge. Over the gurgling creek I could hear snorting and the rush of air past saliva-damp teeth. I clutched the rocks and imagined Dracula's powerful hands rending my clothes and tearing out the book. In my mind, dense shadows swept across Lucy’s screaming face and Van Helsing’s lifeless body.  

For several moments, there was no sound but the gurgle of the creek. The wood above me groaned as he shifted his weight. He snarled and continued on, and I felt the echo of each step in my bones. Up ahead, gravel scattered under his feet. He was heading out into the forest, where I would need to go.

I waited until I no longer heard his footsteps before I climbed out from under the bridge and retrieved my jacket. Now alone, I lurched, weary and drained, toward the ribbon of gravel unfurling into the trees. Something in my remaining blood ebbed toward a point in the distance, where Dracula must be. I had become a compass, my every instinct urging me toward him, instincts I would need to fight with the little strength I had left.

The forest loomed black against a bruise-blue sky. Once I stepped across its threshold, darkness enveloped me. Massive trunks rose from the earth like the pillars of a cathedral, ascending to vaults of intertwined boughs that blotted out the moon. The terrain pitched down towards the distant valley, its rocky outcroppings and loose slopes obscured by shrubs and ferns. The road snaked around roots and beneath patches of mire. I followed what I could see of it, but took care to remain back in the trees. 

Soon my senses came into their new powers, and I could filter out the din of crunching twigs and chirping crickets. Now, the tiniest movements of prey animals—the shudder of a mouse, the tiptoe of a deer—radiated through my mind like ripples across a pond. I wondered if Dracula, also lurking somewhere in these woods, heard my own steps with the same clarity.

As I walked, I felt an ephemeral pull to the south, where I had seen the cottages that marked the frontier between Klausenberg and the wilderness. Dracula must be there searching for victims. Despite my revulsion, I longed to be with him. The way my heart ached when separated from Lucy could not compare to my need to be near the one that sired me. I imagined him carrying the supine body of a maiden, the collar of her chemise torn, revealing a white bosom striped with scarlet. He lapped at the streams trickling down between her breasts and then offered her to me, those stained, wicked lips almost forming a smile. My mouth watered at this fantasy, and the same black hunger I felt in the crypt reverberated through my body. I grabbed a sapling’s slender trunk and sank to my knees. 

Gritting my teeth, I forced myself to contemplate anything but the throbbing of arteries or the smell of blood. My thoughts ran to Van Helsing’s gaunt face, the hollows of his cheeks lit by firelight. He and I spent our last night together in his study, circling the collection of stakes, flasks, and crucifixes we had spread out upon his great oak table.

“I implore you, Jonathan, to take the utmost care not only around Dracula, but around anyone you may meet in the castle,” he told me as he sanded the tip of a stake to a brutal point.

“I know that Dracula may hypnotize men and women to do his bidding, even if he has not turned them,” I had parroted back, while decanting holy water into a flask. “And I must always carry a talisman for protection, for I may not be able to see a vampire’s fangs until he is about to strike.” I had been so eager to prove I was ready for this mission. I had trained hard under the eminent doctor’s instruction, and with my wedding to Lucy in the offing, I would have few chances to help him vanquish the undead.

“Listen to me.” Van Helsing set the stake down and met my eyes with a gaze at once stern and sorrowful. “The undead are uniquely dangerous because of all the ways they resemble us. Even when they show their fangs, they still speak in our voices. They exhibit fear and grief and pain.” His lips twitched, and he closed his hand around a crucifix. “I have watched fledgling vampires wake to their undeath disoriented and in despair. I have seen them cry out for loved ones, and beg for the grace of God. It is a sight tragic enough to sway the heart.” Something flickered in his eyes, like light filtering through a keyhole.

“But they don’t remain that way,” I replied, no longer in a schoolboy’s cadence, but my own.

“No, they do not.” His throat pulsed as he swallowed. “They keep their human appearance, but at a pace even they may not realize, their memories and desires become subsumed by their lust for living blood.” He reached across the table and rested his hand on mine. We stood together in silence, listening to the crackle of the hearth. “I need you to always be on your guard,” he said, “for we face creatures who can wear all the masks of our emotions. But underneath, their humanity is vanishing, or has vanished, to be replaced by a cold, predatory logic. You may not realize how quickly they have changed until it is too late.”

“How long do I have?” I murmured, now to the lonely, dark woods. A breeze whistled past me, punctuated by an owl’s wistful call. I reached into my waistcoat and felt for the diary. My body had made no heat to warm it, which left its leather binding dry and cold.

A wolf howl sounded in the trees. I clambered to my feet and pressed on. Branches rustled nearby and I broke into a trot, and then a run. The edges of my field of view began to swim; I was too depleted to keep this pace up for long. As I dashed through the undergrowth, the compass needle in my blood quivered. Dracula was now moving east. I prayed that whatever his dark business was, it would keep him from heading back toward the castle. A smaller voice, deep within the recesses of my brain, prayed that he would not see me sin against him.

I eventually came upon a glen illuminated by moonbeams filtering through the tree cover. Nearby, the road had reemerged from the detritus on the forest floor. Here it split—one fork connected the castle and the village while the other led through the forest to an unknown place. The light here, though cold, seemed bright as midday compared to the shadowy woods. Its brilliance transformed the birches beside the road to flat black silhouettes.

Across the road, I saw a pair of angular wings spread from a gnarled trunk, shapes too precise to be the work of nature. As I approached, I realized it was the gabled roof of a forest shrine, which sheltered a crucifix. Someone had placed glass jars and bouquets of dried wildflowers at the base of the tree. These were the last signs of human presence I had seen since leaving Klausenberg for Castle Dracula. This place was not far from where the driver had all but thrown me from his coach and sped back toward the village, blubbering as he made the sign of the cross.

An eerie calm hung in the air. I hid against a beech trunk and waited for the phantom presences I had sensed in the forest to wander into the light. None appeared. Encouraged by the stillness, I walked across the path toward the shrine. As I grew closer, my eyes watered and my cheeks burned. Even with His eyes downcast, the wooden Christ spurned me, compelling me into a craven crouch. Only when I sank to the ground did the sting of His hatred abate.

Down among the tree roots, I cleared a space between the glass jars, the bottoms of which were caked with wax and dotted with the corpses of unwary flies. I then took off my jacket and tore a strip of cerulean silk from its lining, hoping that this wrapping would catch a passerby’s eye without immediately revealing what it contained. I removed the diary from my waistcoat, bundled it in the silk, and reached forward to set it down, when I heard the small voice in my mind speak once more.

No.

I clenched the book tighter.

Take it back to the Master.

My breathing grew shallow and my mouth dry.

Take it back to the Master before it is too late.

I held the book against my belly as Dracula’s warning echoed in my mind. “When he that sent you comes to destroy us both,” I repeated in a whisper, “you will seek my protection.” I recalled the sharpened stakes that Van Helsing had arranged on his canvas roll the last night I saw him. One of those stakes was now meant for me. My blood stirred in revolt, and my grip on the diary hardened like mortar.

I needed only to tell Dracula a name, to give him the book, and I could keep my unlife—

I flung my head back and forced myself to stare up at the Christ in the shrine above, bracing myself against the tree so that I would not wither. My lips drew back as my skin all but caught fire. Through a torrent of tears, I looked upon Him, at His crown of thorns, His nail-pierced hands, the spear wound in His side. Upon His wooden face, I saw glimpses of Van Helsing, his thin lips pursed in resolution. Above his flared cheekbones, his eyes gleamed, exhorting me not to break my gaze. Though my eyes did not falter, my fingers trembled until the diary fell free. It landed with a clap against the tree roots and I gasped in relief.

As I moved to rise, my palm grazed something round and slippery in the grass. There was a whiff of smoke, and only when it dissipated did I feel pain. I held my hand up to the moonlight and saw a mottled black stripe on my palm, crossing my life line. That same light glinted off of a string of prayer beads coiled beneath a cluster of desiccated violets.

The sight of the wound stoked its sting. I retreated into the middle of the road, where I licked my singed palm until my heartbeat began to slow. “You are not all lost, Harker, not yet,” I murmured. I might not lose my salvation to temptation.

Rustling sounded in the underbrush, followed by low growls. Several pairs of eyes, round as coins, gleamed in the darkness beyond the path. Lips smacked and tongues lolled as black shapes loped toward the edge of the light. The hairs on my neck pricked as more of them crept up behind me. The air filled with charge. Did they recognize me as a bloodthirsty beast, a creature like themselves? Or did they only sense exhaustion, the mark of a meal?

I took a step back. A twig snapped beneath my heel. Something white and wet flashed beneath those eyes, and I hurtled into the forest. The wolves gave chase through the woods, rushing through the trees like overflowing water, all converging on me. The moonlight dissipated. The road vanished. The trees obscured the forbidding hulk of the castle. Even the phantom needle, meant to lead me back to Dracula, whirled heedlessly in my blood, pointing everywhere and nowhere.

In my flight, I struck a stone and tumbled through thorn bushes onto the ground. From my belly, I watched the wolves close in around me. Their breath from their open jaws warmed the air. Should I have dared to rise, those jaws would have snapped my limbs in two.

The pack leader crept into the circle and sniffed at the hollow of my neck. I could hear the saliva swirling in his mouth. Musk wafted off his fur, tinged with blood. For a moment my hunger surged, cutting through my fear, and I envied the beast. Then a dreadful realization took hold of me. Only a ritualized killing, carried out by human hands, would release my soul from my undead body. If these wolves tore me apart, my soul would remain corrupted, and never find peace.

I lurched up onto my elbows and bared my teeth. Startled, the wolf sprang back. His surprise then curdled to fury; his eyes flashed and nostrils flared. He arched his back and exposed rows of mature fangs, his rumbling growl vibrating even in my bones. I squared my jaw and bent my fingers to form claws with my trimmed fingernails. I had no choice to fight, but whatever unholy powers would enable me to fight this creature, I had yet to discover.

The wolf hunkered down to attack. His subjects champed at the air. I blocked my face with my arm, but after a several frantic gasps, I realized that no paw had touched me. There was a faint scramble of feet across dry leaves. Then the sounds of snorting and panting disappeared.

Then I heard his laughter.

“Where did you think you were going, Mr. Harker?”

I lifted my arm. Dracula stood before me. Behind him, the golden eyes of the wolves receded into the forest and blinked out.

“Did you think you had a place to go back to?”

My lips parted, but I could form no words. In my terror, I did not sense him approach. What did he know? What had he seen?

He knelt beside me and inspected me, turning my face this way and that. Up close, I could see a new freshness to his features, rendering him almost luminous. Every feature of his face, from his dark brows to his full lips, had been restored to the height of its youth and masculine beauty.  A thousand perfumes wafted from the hand that held my jaw. Smoke and candle wax. Linen. Bread and stewed meat. Rose water. A woman’s sweat, laced with fear and arousal. And above all, blood, sweetest blood. I swooned at the scent, and felt his other hand brace me through my mud-damp clothes.

Dracula sneered. “Filthy, pathetic creature.”

He tore away his cloak, threw off his frock coat, and rolled up his sleeve. I watched in a stupor, still intoxicated by his smell. Removing a knife from his hip, he slashed at his forearm with no more of a wince than if he had signed his name.

Crimson seeped from the gash and I sprang forward and sucked at his skin, his blood pulsing as it flooded my mouth. I gripped his shoulder with one hand, and with the other I stretched out his arm and interlaced my fingers with his. The wound on my palm, inflicted by the prayer beads, throbbed against his flesh. So blinded by my thirst was I that I did not think to disguise it. He pulled back as though pricked and searched for the offending object on his unmarred palm. At this separation, a whine escaped my bloodstained lips and I lunged for his arm. He held me fast while he snatched my hand and inspected the burn. The intensity of his gaze startled me out of my passion. Would he see that bulbous, snaking wound as an arrow, directing him back to the place I had betrayed him?

He smiled. I simpered. With the slightest of nods, he raised his arm to me once more, and I sank blissfully into him to feed. 

“You see it now, Harker. You are lost. All your old protections have fallen away.”

I moaned as I drank, in more ecstasy than I had ever known in Lucy’s embrace. I could drink him dry now, I had thought to myself, and even that would not be enough.

“You will need me.”

A wave of blood crashed over my memories. A tide was rising. Still, images surfaced from beneath the scarlet foam, Van Helsing’s among them. 

Please, my friend, I prayed as Dracula’s blood swelled in my veins. Please, find us before I tell him your name.


End file.
